eBay Tech Blog

Google has issued a pretty tepid statement to what appears to be a highly problematic situation.

In its complaint (http://www.ebayinc.com/assets/pdf/fact_sheet/2011_PayPal_DOC.pdf), PayPal alleges in meticulous detail how its chief negotiator over some two years on a major deal with Google for mobile payments on Android brought the deal between the companies to within a hair of signing and then, at the end of the process, did a series of interviews with Google to take a position working on its mobile-payment system. Not only was this person the chief negotiator on that deal, he was also PayPal's senior executive in charge of this area for his employer. On the eve of the anticipated signing (October 31, 2010) after two years of negotiations, Google told PayPal it wanted a restructuring the deal even while it was giving the negotiator a job offer. The negotiator accepted the offer, notified PayPal and was confronted about how this step was seriously problematic from a legal standpoint. He then changed his mind and told Google no. The parties once again revved up the deal and got to a signing stage for the second time by February, 2011. At that point, Google changed its CEO and, with Larry Page back in that role, Google killed the deal and hired the PayPal executive to lead its work in the mobile-payment area.

In the midst of all this, you also have a second PayPal employee who had been hired by Google in 2009 and was under a legal restriction not to solicit PayPal employees…

They didn't know about the breach until about two weeks ago [1], though that doesn't normally excuse that they waited two weeks to go public with the knowledge.

One reason to hold back this information is if going public would make their investigation harder OR if going public would increase the security risk (e.g. if the security hole used wasn't yet fixed and going public meant disclosing something about how the hackers got access). But according to what had been made public so far this doesn't seem to be the case.

[1] http://www.ebayinc.com/in_the_news/story/ebay-inc-ask-ebay-users-change-passwords

For example, here's a paper from eBay, "GUI Testing Powered by Deep Learning":

https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/blogs/tech/gui-testing-powered-by-deep-learning/

> ... writing and maintaining test suites and scripts for multiple platforms [TestNG, Selenium, Appium, IOS Driver, Selandroid, etc] take considerable time and effort and come at the risk of reducing the test scope.

> Contemporary developments in DL unleashes efficiencies in GUI testing and in the software lifecycle, potentially. A recent pilot, described below, proved this approach to be realistic and practical.

>given how tightly the systems remain integrated

Ebay is moving away from its tight integration with Paypal and has a deal with a new payment processor (Adyen) after it's current paypal deal ends in 2020. Between that and the fact that they're two public companies with separate freely traded ownership, it's hard for me to buy the argument that the spin off was "just for show".

https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-to-intermediate-payments-on-its-marketplace-platform/

A useful first step, since eBay is in California, is to exercise your California "right to know" right to obtain copies of all information eBay has on you.[1]
Ebay has a procedure for this, as they are required to.[2][3] It doesn't require a login. That should yield more information.

[1] https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectionc

[2] https://www.ebayinc.com/company/privacy-center/privacy-notice/state-privacy-disclosures/

[3] https://ocswf.ebay.com/privacy